Many investigative reporters are recreational data users, but data alone cannot be trusted.

"You can’t take what is in those databases for granted," said Kate Golden, a reporter and multimedia producer for WisconsinWatch.org. At the panel "Environmental analyses for any newsroom," she emphasized the importance of speaking with the lead agency to find out what the data actually means.

During the panel, Elizabeth Lucas a data reporter for The Center for Public Integrity and Golden highlighted a variety of investigative environmental stories such as "Despite lone inspector’s efforts, persistent haze envelops Iowa town" and "Under legal pressure ...

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Patrick Sweet, a CAR reporter at the The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., and formerly at The Citizens' Voice, shared some of his favorit sessions from the conference on his blog. Here are his thoughts on NewsCamp: Investigating text in the wild and Locating the story: The latest in mapping as well as other panels. His thoughts:

NewsCamp: Investigating text in the wild

 I was super excited for this panel. Picture having to analyze hundreds of government documents. And, we’re not talking about a tab-delimited table; just raw text.

Sarah Cohen from Duke University walked through some fantastic examples ...

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For journalists hoping to analyze geographic data, the cost of geographic information system (GIS) software can be prohibitive. Fortunately, there are open-source, free solutions available for cost-cutting journalists who want to do spatial analysis.

Pursuing an open-source option is easier said than done. Often, open-source software can be difficult for the lay journalist to install and even begin to understand.

PostGIS for PostgreSQL database manager offers a solution that is free, robust and easy to use — assuming you know what you're doing.

Granted, when I received the assignment to install PostGIS for PostgreSQL on my Mac to handle spatial ...

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Gary Sherman's Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source Tools

When journalists are looking for software, they usually greet the words "open source" in one of two ways: with confusion, because open source software is still a daunting mystery; or with delight, because the software is available for free.

Open source software is simply software that is available at no cost and has its source code available to the public. A network of users and developers constantly enhances and expands the program.

Journalists doing CAR have been using robust open-source tools for editing documents, analyzing spreadsheet data and ...

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The process of geolocating information isn't new to journalists; producing maps has long been a key part of what we do. But when it comes to our stories, extracting mappable entities like cities from text is a relatively new concept. There are commercial services that do this task, and researchers have created software for academic pursuits as well. Widespread free availability of geolocation services, however, has been mostly wishful thinking until last month. That's when Yahoo! announced Placemaker, an API for extracting geographic locations from text. It's important to note that Placemaker isn't a geocoder; it ... Read more ...

With resources disappearing from newsrooms, getting the support to build interactive graphics may be an impossible task.

One tool that can help is Many Eyes, a project of IBM's Collaborative User Experience research group. According to the Many Eyes site, its purpose is to “democratize visualizations.”

What you can do is limited. You’re stuck with the formats and color schemes available – mostly many shade of tan.

But when you need to make some data available to users online in an understandable format, it’s a great tool. We used it at ProPublica for some of our stimulus coverage ...

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When you have detailed information about small areas, an interactive, thematic Web map can make all the difference, such as this one showing presidential election results by precinct. For many news organization facing cutbacks, the financial investment can be daunting. Commercial geographic information system products are expensive, as are the products that can translate them to the Web in an interactive form. Fortunately, recent improvements in open-source mapping have put these innovations within reach of anyone with the patience to learn how to use them. In this tutorial, you’ll make an interactive map of the New York region that ...

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As is the case in many news stories, the data analysis can capture and quantify a lot of the "what" but not necessarily the "why." Our newspaper’s series about the increasing use of prescription painkillers in the U.S. is no exception. Reporting revealed the issue to be every bit as complex as we had expected going into it. There are unclear lines between use, abuse and addiction, shaky scientific ground to justify their exponential expansion beyond treating the terminally ill and/or cancer patients, and evidence that the illegal diversion and black market trade of these drugs continues ...

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We already suspected a disproportionate number of Western New York’s lottery players live in Buffalo's poor neighborhoods. The lure of a $1 and a dream is strong where poverty rates run high. But our simple question had not been answered: Are they as likely to win as players from wealthier areas? Our mapping analysis found that, not only are the poor more likely to buy lottery tickets, they are more likely to lose as well. That's not because poor people are any more or less lucky at the lottery than wealthier people.

Instead, as we documented in ...

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The world is not flat. Although this is no news flash, it’s important to remember when you are using geographic information system programs. Maps attempt to put the round globe on a flat surface, but some do so in different ways. Some maps are developed to maintain the integrity of direction, so that one could sail around the world, for example. Other maps, such as those for land use, require accurate area measures. Also, some maps are better for local use, but not so good on a national scale. (For a fun example of mapping differences, check out this ... Read more ...